This month's Des Moines Modern Quilt Bee was chosen by Amy and is based on Melissa Corry's Star Value tutorial. There are forty half square triangles and twenty four squares in each 20" finished block! Happily, Amy furnished almost all of the 3 1/2" and 3" squares.
 |
| It all started out well enough. I stitched up all the slightly oversized half square triangles as directed. |
 |
| They are trimmed to 3" square. |
 |
| Then I stitched the units into rows. Here you see two rows sewn to one another. Luckily I took the time to check dimensions. This block will be sewn side by side with those of fellow Bee members. This means it is extra important to try to make the block the correct size. Mine is more than 3/8" too large. I use a very scant 1/4" seam, and apparently it is too scant when seven seams are taken into account. I am also still adjusting to a new sewing machine and trying out suggested settings, etc. |
 |
| So I moved my needle one tiny position to make the seam allowance larger. You can see two seam lines stitched here. Since I pressed the seams to the side (and not open as I usually do) there was no need to remove the original stitching. |
 |
| Bingo! 20 1/2" |
 |
| Comparing the top half to the bottom half of this photo shows just how much unpieced blocks "shrink" when stitched together. In this case 3 1/2" are lost since there are 7 seams across every row and column. |
|
| Done! It will be fun to see the blocks side by side at Thursday's Des Moines Modern Quilt Group's meeting. Facebook link Website link What will our next Bee block be?? |
Till Tuesday...
Oooo, a really good 'demo' depicting the diff between unsewed patches vs. sewed-together patches!!!
ReplyDelete